Blog Comments

The removal figures are misleading. Obama padded the figures by counting aliens caught at the border after making an entry without inspection. Removal of aliens from the interior went down during his administration.

I am not suggesting that your comments are misleading, Matthew. They aren't. We are being mislead by the way the Obama administration collected and reported enforcement statistics.

I'm not sure I understand. What exactly has changed? Is the only change that Trump isn't pulling people out of the backlog for removal proceedings and sending them home as a matter of prosecutorial discretion?

Matthew, this doesn't surprise you, does it? Do you think that asylum officers in the Trump Administration are going to be inclined to find credible fears as often as possible? Remember, they will be conducting these interviews in expanded expedited removal proceedings which are going to be used to move aliens out of the country as rapidly as possible without hearings before an immigration judge.

It doesn't matter what guidance instructions they get. They are going to know what they are expected to do.

None of my comments (including my admittedly over-repeated references to John the Baptist, which are not meant to offend anyone's religious views - my apologies to anyone who might have been offended) are intended to imply any lack of respect for Matt, whose activities in protecting the rights of people caught up in our deportation system are second to no one and deserves the support and praise of everyone who is interested in any way with, or involved with, immigration.

I am an immigration lawyer who, for many years, have concentrated my practice in a different area of immigration law (i.e. high skilled and professional work visas and green cards) and I cannot hold myself out as a deportation law expert.

Nonetheless, I am outraged by this news item and do not believe that it is fair or right to deport this individual.

I will not argue further with Matt about one of America's most biased and least trustworthy news outlets. But I would also look for confirmation from a real source before taking Fox's word for anything.

Nor do I mean to imply that every time someone has a visa or entry problem it is due to discrimination or prejudice.

That would be absurd. I just got a message from a client who is being held up waiting for a visa at a US embassy because the embassy allegedly hadn't updated its computer system's records.

The client is from Eastern Europe, the same part of the world where Trump's own wife comes from.

No racial or religious prejudice here, only the kind of incompetence in the immigration system that I have been dealing with for almost four decades as an immigration lawyer.

The president was certainly right when he intervened to overturn the visa denials and allow these courageous young women to come to the US to participate in a robotics competition that even the team from Iran was granted visas to attend, even though Iran, unlike Afghanistan, is on the president's banned list?

As you may just possibly have noticed, I am not usually among the president's strongest supporters on immigration issues (or anything else). But here, he has done something great, something truly presidential and worthy of his high office. I commend him and fully support his move.

Newspaper reports say that the young women told the US embassy that all of their family members and contacts are in Afghanistan and they have no intention of staying in the United States. The president evidently believed them. I respect and fully concur in his judgment on this point.

Matthew L. Kolken is a trial lawyer with experience in all aspects of United States Immigration Law – including deportation defense before Immigration Courts throughout the United States, appellate practice before the Board of Immigration Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and U.S. Courts of Appeals. He is admitted to practice in the courts of the State of New York, the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and has been a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) since 1997.